Midnight 11: Hopping Down the Bunny Trail from UNEXPECTED #202

April 15, 2017

On this special Easter episode, Ryan Daly and Martin Gray review “Hopping Down the Bunny Trail” originally published in Unexpected #202. Also featured, an original short story written by Anj. Plus, listener feedback!

Howliday Inn by James Howe was my favorite book as a child. I still have (tattered pieces) of my original copy. It was the first sequel to Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery., which I checked out from the library and wasn’t as impressed with. The less said about the third book, The Celery Stalks at Midnight, the better. I was too old to notice four additional sequels were produced. Apparently, a cartoon series came out last year that looks terrible and completely demolishes the tone of the original stories (which read like they should be drawn by Gene Colan & Tom Palmer and was similar to the comic Beasts of Burden) in favor of horrendous slapstick.

Never read Watership Down, but the animated film was terrific. Didn’t make it to Curse of the Were-Rabbit in my Wallace & Gromit fandom, which mostly begins and ends with The Wrong Trousers (from which I own a stuffed Feathers McGraw doll and coffee mug. I’m all about Feathers McGraw.)

My older brother when he moved out of the house gave me his huge stash of comics and a lot of them were Unexpected. THIS ISSUE I remember the best from all of them and at the time I was 10 years old and it freaked me out. One year as a teenager I dressed up as this rabbit for Halloween and no one understood what I was. Ever since that issue I could never look at a chocolate bunny in the same way.

You sick bastards! I expect this out of Ryan but…well, never mind Martin. You sent me that Batman Annual, so we’re cool.

I read the story from the gallery pages this morning, shortly before taking our daughter Dani to a town-sponsored Easter Egg hunt. Needless to say, the story was on my mind! WOW!!! Kind of hard to believe DC got away with this. THE EASTER BUNNY BITES THE KID HEAD OFF ON PANEL!!! Only the chocolate coating covers the graphic horror of it all.

Of course Michael Uslan is one of the executive producers of the Swamp Thing movies AND EVERY Batman movie. Guy must have signed one cushy contract, because he gets a credit just as often as Bob Kane every time Batman appears in ANY kind of film.

While I think the cover is a great a real grabber, I’m even more impressed by the interior art by Terry Henson. I’m not familiar with Henson’s work, but it has a 70s children’s book feel to it that really works well when contrasted with the horrific elements. The whole thing has a nastier tone to it than I generally think of when considering DC’s late 70s/early 80s horror output, which to my memory was always pretty tame. Thanks for highlighting this little gem.

Martin’ stories of walking through his town at night were creepy all on their own. Maybe he needs to write something himself and send it into the show!

First off, Anj’s story was god damn brilliant. I love when I can be so caught off guard by something so simple.

As for this story, this would have terrified the everloving hell out of me if I’d read it as a kid. Not because of the specific imagery, but because (as you two noted) the kids did nothing to deserve this fate. They’re not even particularly greedy in their pursuit of chocolate, and their mistakes in terms of being lured in weren’t unreasonable ones (they THOUGHT they knew who the bunny was, so it wouldn’t have set off a stranger danger alert.) The idea of such a horrific fate happening to kids who didn’t break some rule or engage in some obvious trespass that brought it on flies in the face of any sense of innate justice in the world (something that we’re more likely to need a sense of when we’re younger, if our circumstances allow for such a view.) This sort of thing taps into the same part of me that, for as long as I can remember, has hated babies being put in danger. The innocence and the helplessness chills me, the fact that this small being can only scream and cry: they are literally doing everything they themselves are physically capable of doing to prevent harm and it doesn’t matter. That has fucked with my head and my sense of how the world is supposed to work my entire life, and while this story doesn’t hit that quite as hard by the kids not being infants it still touches that same nerve, or at least brushes past it.

I’m kind of sick to friggin’ death of throwing my hopes into the bottomless “wishing” well of suck that is the Big Two. Part of the reason this industry is a rotting corpse is fans whose loyalty to corporations prevent them from seeking out what they say they want from outside the mainstream. I don’t want or need DC Comics to produce a horror anthology when such things exist but go largely unsupported from independent publishers. That said, short stories are a seemingly lost art form, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen anything notable from anyone with name value. However, I bought Image Comics’ okay Island for about a year, and continue to support Dark Horse Presents and Avatar’s Cinema Purgatorio every month. Of the anthologies I’ve read in recent years, the closest to fitting Ryan’s request for something with a Bronze Age sci-fi/horror vibe was Aazurn Publishing’s Indie Comics, which was admittedly more miss than hit and seems to have died an early death (but had some nice pieces.)

I read a survey last week that 66% of people bite the ears off first in a chocolate bunny, while 3% eat the bottom first. Luckily, the writer of this story chose the more popular was to each a chocolate rabbit, else the story would have gotten really weird!!!!

This comment may seem late, coming as it does towards the end of May, but I assure you that it’s not. We haven’t hit the Day of Pentecost yet, so I believe it’s still the Easter season according to the church calendar. (I feel much better now that I’ve defended my tardiness).

Regardless of my timing, I wanted to thank you for another great episode featuring a truly creepy tale. I have to wonder about what happened to all of the other children in the house. Were they simply allowed to leave unharmed, or did they each fall prey to the Easter Bunny’s trapdoor as they attempted to leave? Perhaps, we only witnessed one of many traps set throughout the house. Now, that idea ups the horror-factor for me by an order of magnitude.